1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a bookbinding system for binding books by use of book content data and cover data.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In order to give a sense of high quality and the durability to a book, a cover (case cover) which is made of a material different from sheets used to write the contents of the book is attached to the sheets. There are various kinds of known methods for this, and for example, wire stitching and perfect binding have often been used. However, in these methods of the wire stitching and the like, it is difficult to put a small edition of books into mechanization for bookbinding, and a cost for the bookbinding increases in a certain case. Accordingly, as a method to which much attention has recently been paid, a so-called gluing bookbinding is present. In this method, a cover is attached with a glue to sheets on which contents are written and which are folded in the order of pages. That is to say, a plurality of sheets containing the contents of the book are first stacked in the order of pages so that the sheets are not scattered. Then, a cover is prepared and glued to the bound book in a spine portion to complete the book. Heretofore, for the above bookbinding, there-have been proposed apparatuses and methods for forming images on predetermined sheets by use of book content data in which the contents of the book are recorded and cover data regarding a cover, and then binding the sheets containing the printed contents and the cover by the gluing.
For example, Japanese Patent Nos. 2752738, 2752739 and 2752740 disclose an apparatus for bookbinding in which a cover is bound to a bundle of transfer sheets on which images are formed by an image forming apparatus such as a copying unit. In addition to the above-described apparatus, Japanese Patent No. 2845999 discloses an apparatus in which images are formed providing a margin for a gluing part. Furthermore, Japanese Patent No. 2944688 discloses an apparatus comprising recording means for forming images on recording sheets while providing a margin for a gluing part as well as a bookbinding mechanism for binding the recording sheets.
Japanese Patent No. 3133747 discloses a bookbinding apparatus for avoiding a binding miss due to a malfunction of a guide plate for guiding objects to be bound during a gluing bookbinding step.
Japanese Patent No. 3146335 discloses a bookbinding apparatus for performing bookbinding by use of a binding tape on which printing is also possible.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 151734/1998 discloses a printing apparatus for case bookbinding after a spine portion has been processed by printing the spine portion in accordance with the thickness of a bound book including formed images.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-open 139037/1999 discloses an apparatus and a method for gluing and case bookbinding in which quires and a cover are glued and folded into two.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-open 180068/1999 discloses a method in which a case bound book is prepared in a size larger than that of a book to be finally completed, and three sides of the book are then cut off for finishing. For a spine of the book, a flexible material is used.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-open 2000-184154 discloses an apparatus which detects the thickness of a recording medium on which images are formed and which estimates the thickness of a spine in accordance with the detected thickness.
In the conventional bookbinding systems, however, each step of image formation for a text body, printing on a cover and case bookbinding is based on an off-line system. For example, the cover is prepared by offset print, and the images for the text body are formed by a monochromatic printer. Thus, the system is performed by the off-line until the case bookbinding. This is performed by on-demand in a unit of one or two days, but it is not due to on-demand in a unit of one or two minutes. Therefore, the conventional bookbinding apparatus has a serious problem that it is difficult to make a book on the spot at a store wherein the apparatus is installed.